Do you remember where you were when Neil Armstrong stepped
on the moon? Where were you when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated?
How did you first learn of the Martin Luther King Jr.’s slaying?
For baby boomers, these watershed events were also media
bonfires. In other words, the world gathered around radios and televisions for
live broadcasts of the unfolding details. They read in-depth coverage in the
morning and evening paper and full-length features in magazines. Breaking news
had a way of uniting people, at least in the shared experience of discovering
the information. Millions and even billions simultaneously huddled around
broadcasts and read the same publications on the way to work or back home or in
their dentists’ waiting room.
However, the children of boomers are all journalists. And
none of them saw Lee Harvey Oswald gunned down on live TV. They receive
bulletins and alerts on smartphones sometimes faster than mainstream media. I
was aboard a Chicago River tour boat on Saturday, taking in the windy city’s
architecture with my family. Our younger son elbowed me and showed me his
smartphone screen. It said, “Neil Armstrong First Man on the Moon Dies.”
Earlier that same afternoon while walking along the Miracle
Mile, my older son’s fiancée expressed her dismay with the Today Show on
Friday. She lives in Chicago, so she’s used to watching NBC’s morning fare on
tape delay. Unfortunately, the newscast is also prerecorded. Her iPhone
vibrated to announce the Empire State Building shooting. It wasn’t until
several minutes later that NBC went live to report the tragedy. Just not fast
enough in today’s 24/7, always-on news cycle.
When I studied electronic journalism at Wayne State
University in the late 1970’s, there were wire machines in the classrooms, fed
by the United Press International (UPI) and the Associated Press (AP).
Occasionally, one of my instructors would run to the machines when they chimed
bulletins, flashes and alerts. All my teachers were working editors, reporters
and executive producers. They knew
real-life breaking news was something only a professional experienced. For a
journalism student, the classroom wire service was the next best thing. I
remember one day, the professor tore the wire copy off the machine seconds
after it chimed. He slapped it face down on the photocopier and instantly
printed 12 copies, one for each of us in the class. We were in the midst of
typing up a rundown for a newscast. He briskly walked into the room with the
copy and announced, “this just in” as he tossed the bulletin in front of each
of us. We had to shuffle our plans and reorder the events of the day. We were
learning news judgment and how to manage information. We gained insight into developing leads, story
angles, following up details, identifying sources and corroborating facts.
Today, your son or daughter, neighbor, work colleague or the
passenger next to you on the bus, subway or plane is a journalist, re-reporting
information that arrives very hot off the wire. Billions of people today are
experiencing breaking news all by themselves or via social networking. We’ve
lost the collective journalistic bonfire we once gathered around to feel the
warmth of mutual interest and smell the smoke of sizzling, hard news. Now, each
of us will have his or her own point-of-view on historic events, developed in
140 characters or less. Whether the information has been validated or not.
